Darden hires 177 to qualify for tax incentives

Darden Restaurants created enough jobs at its Orlando headquarters by the end of 2011 to qualify for state and Orange County tax incentives, though not the full amount it had hoped for, the company said Thursday.

Darden, which owns Olive Garden, Red Lobster and other chains, said it created 177 jobs — 14 short of the 191 it originally projected.

The company now has 1,518 employees working out of its headquarters, spokesman RichJeffers said.

Jeffers said Darden will get $210,187, about $11,000 less than it would have if it had created the full number it had planned.

County and state officials approved a tax-incentive package worth up to $163 million over 30 years to convince Darden to keep its corporate offices in Orange. That includes up to $2.5 million through the "qualified target industry" program, in which Darden said it would create 500 headquarters jobs over five years.

Darden, Orlando's only Fortune 500 company with annual revenues of $7.5 billion, was originally supposed to create the first round of jobs by the end of 2009, the year it opened its new building. The baseline was 2006, when the incentives were initially approved.

But as the economy soured, employment at its headquarters actually dipped. It and other companies were granted a two-year extension to fill the jobs because of the tough economy.

"When we were at the height of the economic downturn, we were very conservative about staffing," Jeffers said. "As we saw things begin to improve, we still were somewhat conservative but thinking we could begin to fill some of these positions we hadn't filled. "

The company has done more hiring in its finance, marketing and legal departments. It also got a slight boost from its acquisition of the small Eddie V's seafoodchain, although most of the employees work out west where the restaurants are based.

A spokesman for the state Department of Economic Opportunity, which has to sign off on the numbers, said it couldn't comment because it is still auditing them.